The naked time

So this is by far my favorite episode.... This week that is. I think it blends dealing with disease spreading over the enterprise with a totally separate issue with the planet bring the ship down. I think it makes for a great episode.

One thing has always puzzled me tho....

When they go back in time the three days... What happens? Do they just hang low and wait three days to pass... go back and save the crewman that died?

I don't think they can go back and save the crewman who died because they haven't really time traveled in the sense that I think you mean. Otherwise, wouldn't there now be two of the Enterprise and crew existing on the same timeline? I think we need a physics enthusiast to weigh in on this one.

When they went back three days, they seemed to go in a bubble that took all their problems with them. Joe Tormolin was still dead. And they can't really prevent the problems that occurred (damage to the warp engines, hangovers...) because that all went back with them too.

They went back in time from the universe's point of view, but kept all the bad experienced they'd just had. It's not what you have in mind when bad things happen and you wish you could go back.

"Otherwise, wouldn't there now be two of the Enterprise and crew existing on the same timeline?"

Right! When the Enterprise went back in time, it would suddenly appear in its "experienced" state and disappear from where it was the first time around. That ship would vanish. And yet that wipes out the having of the intoxicating experiences at Psi 2000 which the crew remembers. So it's a paradox.

The novel "Present Tense" was supposed to be a direct sequel to "The Naked Time". The premise of that book was that the Enterprise was heading to a remote part of space to lay low for the three day period in order to avoid meeting themselves.

The novel "Present Tense" was supposed to be a direct sequel to "The Naked Time". The premise of that book was that the Enterprise was heading to a remote part of space to lay low for the three day period in order to avoid meeting themselves.

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Are you talking about the 3 part series, book one the janus gate?

I looked up the book and the summary doesn't really mention anything like " after being thrown back 3 days". I'm not saying your wrong because I have no clue. Just curious.

When the Enterprise went back in time, it would suddenly appear in its "experienced" state and disappear from where it was the first time around. That ship would vanish.

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No, but meeting up with themselves would have been a paradox since it did not happen "the first time around." And that's the real crux of the matter, and where many people (including authors) get tangled up in time travel stories. The events of the universe do not "happen again" just because a time traveler folds back over his own path. As Doc Brown said, "You're not thinking fourth dimensionally."

(The only way to have the Enterprise meet up with itself and lead to a different chain of events without it being a paradox is to invoke a multi-verse. This is the flaw in BACK TO THE FUTURE—Marty interfered with known events multiple times, which means he could not have known about them and the need to "correct" them. That's a paradox. So BTTF must be a multi-verse... but then nothing any Marty in any universe did could lead to the one on stage playing guitar to vanish. Double flaw. Meanwhile, BTTF2 had a pair'o'docs handing himself a wrench.)

"Tomorrow Is Yesterday" does not work no matter how you slice it, while "Assignment Earth" is a perfect example of a reflexive causality—meaning the Enterprise did not "change" anything, as they were a part of that history. They simply didn't know it going in.

When the Enterprise went back in time, it would suddenly appear in its "experienced" state and disappear from where it was the first time around. That ship would vanish.

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No, but meeting up with themselves would have been a paradox since it did not happen "the first time around." And that's the real crux of the matter, and where many people (including authors) get tangled up in time travel stories. The events of the universe do not "happen again" just because a time traveler folds back over his own path. As Doc Brown said, "You're not thinking fourth dimensionally."

(The only way to have the Enterprise meet up with itself and lead to a different chain of events without it being a paradox is to invoke a multi-verse. This is the flaw in BACK TO THE FUTURE—Marty interfered with known events multiple times, which means he could not have known about them and the need to "correct" them. That's a paradox. So BTTF must be a multi-verse... but then nothing any Marty in any universe did could lead to the one on stage playing guitar to vanish. Double flaw. Meanwhile, BTTF2 had a pair'o'docs handing himself a wrench.)

"Tomorrow Is Yesterday" does not work no matter how you slice it, while "Assignment Earth" is a perfect example of a reflexive causality—meaning the Enterprise did not "change" anything, as they were a part of that history. They simply didn't know it going in.

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Well, the Enterprise went back three days, arriving at a different physical location than it was at three days ago, and there weren't two Enterprises (suddenly having two would violate the conservation of matter).

So I figure that when the Enterprise goes back in time, the first-time-around ship must vanish from that location (from an outsider observer's POV). It's really the same ship, not vanishing but skipping over part of the timeline and getting instantly to where the ship now appears.

Ah, is time travel possible? That's a totally different argument, which I did not address, accepting it as a given in the story. As shown on screen, the episode does not invoke any paradoxes, but I addressed paradoxes because of the original post.

So I figure that when the Enterprise goes back in time, the first-time-around ship must vanish from that location ... skipping over part of the timeline and getting instantly to where the ship now appears.

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And that would be a paradox because then the "inexperienced" Enterprise would not be there to undergo the events that led to the engine implosion and time displacement.

Just for the record, some sci-fi authors try to slide around causality by invoking quantum mechanics (e.g. Orson Scott Card's PASTWATCH). And QM is a form of magic accepted by most contemporary physicists. Working from the assumption that time is broken down into quanta like the frames of a film, a paradox can happen from the point of time displacement forward—basically, an effect pops out of nowhere with no cause, as the paradox erases its cause. But by this "logic," causality ceases to have any meaning, and so the paradox becomes a paradox. (Again, magic. It happened that way just because the author wanted it to happen that way, and audiences accept it because it is "scientific.")

Look up Klein bottle—that is the shape of time (or at least some topologists use it as a bong). That is what the mythical "outside observer" would see, like a projectionist with a reel of film. The reel contains all events from start to finish; the events do not "happen" to the outside observer. That history simply "is."

And conservation laws are a philosophical construct. As with many other notions in science, they cannot be proven, but we accept them until such time as they might be falsified.

The key points are that the shooting script for "The Naked Time" is actually called "The Naked Time (Part 1)"

And when asked what course to plot for the slingshot effect, the line in the script is: "Doesn't matter...the way we came...toward Earth." (The aired episode just says "Doesn't matter...the way we came.")

Well, the Enterprise went back three days, arriving at a different physical location than it was at three days ago, and there weren't two Enterprises (suddenly having two would violate the conservation of matter).

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Assuming Psi 2000 had an orbit around its star not too dissimilar from our Earth you'd always be arriving at a different (and empty) spot in space as the planet hasn't gotten there, yet...

Unless your time machine is a spaceship, too (apparently the screenplay writer of "The Alternative Factor" understood the problem!), your time travelling would be limited to exact and full solar years.

Assuming Psi 2000 had an orbit around its star not too dissimilar from our Earth you'd always be arriving at a different (and empty) spot in space as the planet hasn't gotten there, yet...

Unless your time machine is a spaceship, too (apparently the screenplay writer of "The Alternative Factor" understood the problem!), your time travelling would be limited to exact and full solar years.

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This argument is very similar to the one I noted above where causality is selectively followed. That a time machine would appear out in space where the Earth was at the initiation of time displacement ignores all inertia. What if time is like shuttling fast-forward on video? Then the "world line" of the machine would remain tied to the environment. That might make for a rough ride. So time traveling in open space might be safer. Or perhaps a time machine would shoot off at a tangent to the movement of the Earth?

The follow-up point I wanted to make is that the Earth moves around the Sun, the Sun around the galaxy, the galaxy around its cluster, etc. So while the "limited to one Solar year" argument ignores the inertia of the Earth, it obviously mandates the inertia of everything from the Solar level up.

So which is it: No inertia at all, or Time And Relative Dimensions In Space?

Don't forget about the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, about crossing your own timeline.

My personal opinion is that with a time warp drive being the Federation's primary engine of transportation, time trouble really wouldn't be as rare as we might think. My understanding of the warp drive is it allows a ship to be in a warp "bubble" in which time functions differently, therefore letting the ship get somewhere faster than light speed without arriving 80 years later to everyone else's point of view.